FMA -- With the Devil on Your Back
Title: With the Devil on Your Back
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed/Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,130
Warnings: language, MAJOR spoilers for 2003/CoS, implied threesome sexytimes
Summary: The Elrics have wended their way to London. On a dark night down a dirty street, Al gambles on a familiar soul.
Author's Note: In the parallel universe where I live, hiza_chan offhandedly mentioning that she hasn't seen very many alt!Roys counts as a prompt. So I OT3'd. At work. Fortunately, it's only, y'know, eight times longer than it needed to be for this week's pulped_fictions thing. XD'
Given half the chance, would I take any of it back?
- “Shake It Off” - Florence + The Machine -
WITH THE DEVIL ON YOUR BACK
Usually Ed’s head is so firmly in the clouds that Al can almost see ice crystals in his hair, but this morning, as they emerge from Warren Street with their arms full of draft edits, the elder Elric stops short. The crowd pouring up and out jostles them, indistinguishable elbows digging at Al’s shoulders and his ribs, but the look in Ed’s eyes makes him stop moving and turn to follow his brother’s gaze.
There’s a man sitting on the street, slouching against one of the storefronts. He has a rusted tin can in his right hand, and as he shakes it, half a dozen coins rattle against the sides. A filthy bandage snakes around his skull and drapes over his left eye, but his clothes are so tattered and his face is so dirty that Al almost doesn’t recognize him all the same.
“It’s not him,” Ed says before Al can even find the words to ask. “Not really. It’s never really them. You met Hughes.”
“But-”
“But nothing.”
“But everything,” Al says, clutching a manuscript closer as a particularly ungracious pedestrian bumps his arm. “Look at him. Something terrible must have happened. And even if he’s not the same, we can’t pay our debts to the one we know. We have an obligation to help him.”
“It’s not him,” Ed says, and he pivots on his right heel and starts striding down the pavement.
Al hesitates another moment, hugging the papers to his chest. The more he looks, the harder it becomes to look away-this man’s jaw is identical, but for the stubble; his hair is longer, and it’s never been so unkempt; his eye is precisely the same shape, but it’s dull. This man shakes the can and curls his free hand in the collar of his coat, pulling it tighter. His gaze is flat, cold, empty as it pans over the hurrying mass of humanity; and then it lands on Al, and it focuses, and it burns.
It’s him. Somehow, it’s him, even here, even with a different life and a different story; they’re the same person. They have the same soul underneath. And Al can’t let that go.
Al swallows, pinned by the heat of that solitary eye, by the intensity, by the connection. It has to be him.
Al pulls the papers a little closer, tears himself away, and darts off running after Ed.
He’s always been more observant than his brother-Ed is a doer, an actor, a builder. He’s a cause, not an effect. Al’s capable of impulsiveness, too; he gets hot and cold and bright and dark almost as wildly as Ed, sometimes; but he’s used to standing back and watching the progression of Ed’s projects. It’s turned him into an analyst.
Al notices things. Al noticed the way that Roy Mustang, their Roy Mustang, the Roy Mustang, looked at Ed-or, more specifically, the way that he wouldn’t. Roy looked everywhere but at Ed, and Al thinks that was because he knew the plan, knew what Ed intended, and knew that he would have to let Ed go again. Roy was preparing to lose him a second time.
Al can’t extrapolate far enough to know if it worked, but he can tell that even if Ed wasn’t fully aware of what was happening, he sensed it. He wasn’t conscious of the details, but he felt the end of something significant, and he accepted it. Ed was saying goodbye to more than just his complicated relationship with Roy Mustang-Ed was saying goodbye to Amestris; to home; to second chances; to Al, or so he thought. Ed was giving up everything. He didn’t have much time to spare trying to meet Roy’s narrowed gaze in search of closure.
Al has to jog to catch up to Ed, who’s still forging through the legions of Londoners. Al keeps pace with his brother in silence for a moment before he tilts his head and clears his throat, watching Ed’s face.
“If he’s still there tonight,” he says, “we’re taking him in.”
“He’s not a stray fucking cat, Al,” Ed says, and his voice is low, but there’s a razor-wire edge. “Though he’s probably got the same fucking diseases. We’re not going near him, period. He’s just trouble, okay? We’ve got enough fucking trouble. We can’t afford to feed another mouth, and you know it, and even if we could, he’s probably even more of a bastard in this universe. You saw what this world did to Hughes-to all of Germany. This country’s exactly the same. People are just fucked up here, Al. And we can’t go around piling their shit on ourselves just because we know better. We’re not heroes in this place, okay? Never were, never will be, don’t fucking want to.”
“You don’t mean that,” Al says.
“Yes, I do.”
“You don’t know what you mean,” Al says. “You can’t even use semicolons.”
Ed growls in the back of his throat, but the twitch of his lips betrays him. “God fucking damn it, Al-I told you I’d leave punctuation to you from now on. Happy?”
“Delighted,” Al says, but most of his mind is already counting down the hours.
They’re a team. They’re such an excellent team that their idiosyncrasies-Ed’s cold metal hand; Al’s fifteen-year-old face and advanced vocabulary; their inseparability; their old habits; Ed’s eyes-are duly overlooked.
They vet things. They edit textbooks of physics and chemistry; they test and improve mathematical formulae. Ed has extensive insider knowledge of the German rocketry program, and Great Britain has scented the next war. Al has discovered that the grammatical minutiae of the English language are stunningly similar to to the rules of Amestrian, and he’s become notorious for the mercilessness of his red pen.
It’s simple work-it’s small. The weight of this world rests on somebody else’s shoulders. Ed complains, says he’s restless, says they’re poor, but he’s freer than he ever was before. They’re just people now. They’re quiet. And it suits them.
Ed pretends he’s forgotten, but Al sees the way his shoulders tense as they start back towards the Tube station. Only very rarely do they walk in silence-only when they’re pointedly not-discussing something Ed doesn’t want to address. Al thinks the evasion is silly. If something needs to be said, it will be, sooner or later, and there’s nothing to be gained in procrastinating. But then, he’d let Ed get away with anything.
Al picks the huddled shape out of the dimness with fifty yards to go. “He’s still there.”
“Don’t care,” Ed says.
“Of all the lies you could tell about this,” Al says, “that’s the dumbest. I’m going to ask him if he’s hungry.”
“Are you crazy?” Ed hisses. “He’s probably a psycho serial killer, and he’s just waiting with the knife.”
“He’s not,” Al says.
“How do you know?” Ed asks. “Mustang-our Mustang, the Mustang we actually know, who is not this guy… Al, he killed the Rockbells. The fucking Rockbells. Executed them, cold blood. That was our Mustang-rich, smarmy, in-control, Colonel Dickhead Mustang. This guy is beaten down and broken and washed the fuck up, okay? We don’t know what he’s been through, and we don’t know what he’s done, and we don’t have any idea what he’s capable of.”
“It can’t hurt just to learn his name,” Al says.
Ed’s eyes narrow, and his mouth tightens, and he says nothing.
He doesn’t have to say anything. Ed’s lost more than Al has, when you really sum it up. Ed lost Alfons Heiderich, and Dad, and the magic that made him whole. He fought his way to a glimpse of Roy, and Winry, and the land that mothered them, and then he handed it all back again, in the name of making things right. Ed has sacrificed too much, too many times. He can’t take any more disappointment.
“Give me sixty seconds,” Al says. “Then we can go.”
He scurries over before Ed can catch his arm and crouches down, shifting the hangar blueprints to the crook of his elbow so that he won’t bend them. Close up, the man looks haggard and dirty and weak.
“Hi,” Al says.
The man blinks his one eye. “Hello,” he says, and it’s Roy’s voice, whether or not it’s hoarse and scratchy and low.
Al looks at him for a moment, thoughtfully. Same cheekbones. Same chin. Same eyebrows. Same hands, but these gloves are gray wool, fraying at the fingertips.
“Do I know you?” the man asks.
“Almost,” Al says. “Do you want something to eat?”
“He can’t have any of our food,” Ed says loudly from several feet away.
“Shut up, Brother,” Al says. “He can have my share.”
“No, he can’t!”
“I couldn’t possibly deprive you of a meal,” the man-who-even-talks-like-Roy says. “You’re so little as it is.”
“I’m still growing,” Al says.
Ed snickers.
“In that case,” Al says, shifting the blueprints a little more and fumbling in his pocket for his wallet, “how much more do you need before you can buy a nice dinner somewhere?”
“Al,” Ed says.
“I won’t just leave hi-”
“Please keep your money,” the man says. “I can’t take charity from children.”
That sounds like Roy, too-his pride is the only thing he has left, and he’ll guard it like a dragon’s hoard.
Al will be having none of that, thank you.
“Look at yourself,” he says. “How long has it been since you slept on a bed, or bathed, or ate something that didn’t make you sick? All I’m offering you is a little bit of comfort. You don’t have a whole lot of dignity left-what good is clinging to the shreds of it?”
“Al,” Ed says in the Final Warning voice, “he is not coming back with us.”
“He can sleep on the floor,” Al says.
“He is not sleeping in our flat.”
“He can sleep in the hall. At least it’s heated.”
“I’m not letting him loiter around outside our door while we’re unconscious!”
“What in the world do you think he’s going to do?”
“You saw ‘Nosferatu’!”
“He is not a vampire.”
“For all we know, he is!”
It’s impossible to argue with Ed when he’s being like this. Al turns to the man-who-might-as-well-be-Roy instead and finds a familiar expression of sardonic amusement.
“You’re not a vampire, are you?” Al asks.
Essentially-Roy shakes his head, and the corners of his lips quirk up.
“But you’re hungry, right?”
Essentially-Roy nods.
“There,” Al says. “Problem solved.”
“He is not sleeping in our flat,” Ed says. “Even if he’s not a vampire, he stinks.”
“I beg your pardon,” definitely-Roy says.
“I’m not having you in the kitchen smelling like that,” Ed says. “Al, give him one of the crap towels. Bathroom’s down the hall. Hot water lasts about thirty seconds, but you’re just going to have to deal with it until you’re cleaner than my brother’s language.”
“Yes, sir,” must-be-Roy says, still with that flicker of amusement in his one good eye. Al hands over the crappiest towel they have-heretical hospitality or no, this Roy will need several washings before he won’t muddy the linens-and he and Ed watch must-be-Roy step out into the hallway and pull the door carefully shut behind him.
The silence swells for a moment.
“What the fuck are we doing?” Ed asks.
“The right thing,” Al says.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“Agreed.”
The resemblance is staggering when this Roy is clean. ‘Resemblance’ isn’t an appropriate word anymore; this is the same man, down to the last scrubbed-pink fingertip.
“What the hell are you shivering for?” Ed asks.
“You weren’t exaggerating about the hot water,” this Roy says.
“I have never fucking exaggerated in my long and dramatic life,” Ed says.
“Certainly not,” this Roy says. “You’re not the type.”
Ed very nearly cracks a grin.
“Brother,” Al says, “do we have gauze?”
“Maybe,” Ed says, eyeing this Roy’s makeshift eyepatch dubiously. “Yeah, take that nasty thing off; you’re probably spreading plague or rabies or typhoid or something. And why the hell did you put your old clothes back on? Five quid says you’ve got fleas.”
“I do not,” Roy says, imperiously, “carry disease.” He pauses, rather less imperiously. “And, nasty or no, I don’t take it off.”
Ed flicks his gaze towards Al. Al dips his head swiftly and then feigns interest in the chair shortage in their kitchen.
“At least let me get you something sanitary to wear,” Ed says, oozing charm now. “Something nice and clean and warm. I think I have one of our asshole dad’s coats packed up somewhere-I guess just a blanket would be a little bit salacious-”
Al hops up onto the chair he’s been faux-examining and snatches the dirty bandages away.
This Roy goes through tumults of emotions just like the ones Al remembers-shock, bewilderment, humiliation, rage, resignation. It’s like watching a film with half the reel’s frames dropped, snapping from one moment to the next.
“Shrapnel?” Ed asks, defiantly undaunted. So much for treating this Roy like a stranger; Ed’s already relying on his understanding of the man he knows. He reaches up, then, and brushes the fingertips of his left hand lightly over the ragged, crawling white scar tissue and the angry red half-healed wounds. In all honesty, it’s a hideous deformation-grotesque, violent, unsightly, upsetting. Al doesn’t know the details of the other Roy’s mirror-image injury, but this one’s eye is gone, and the empty socket is crisscrossed with stark, jagged lines as though it’s been scratched out in a drawing by a spiteful child.
Roy, any Roy, wouldn’t want that to be seen-wouldn’t want to be seen so unequivocally damaged, so repulsively destroyed. Ed was right. They don’t know what this man will do if they provoke him; they don’t know anything at all. Al stands on the chair with the stained bandages in his hands and holds his breath.
Ed runs the pad of his thumb across this Roy’s cheekbone, tracing the ridges of discolored flesh. “This is it?” he asks. “This is all you’ve got?”
This Roy’s existing eye narrows, and his fingers curl slowly into fists. “It’s hardly-”
“Nice to meet you,” Ed says, holding out his right hand. “I’m Edward Elric.”
Al thinks for a long, weighty moment that Roy’s going to slap him and walk out. Then Roy lifts his hand and clasps it around Ed’s and starts to shake and stares.
“Sophisticated machinery,” Ed says. “You people have nothing on this shit. Back home, you probably could’ve had a new eye-I mean, Archer did; did I tell you that, Al? Did you get a chance to ask that dumbass colonel why he didn’t get one, too?”
Al knows that Ed only ever reveals his automail in this world in a rush of nerves, with a flood of defensive explanations. It seems like Roy is intuiting the vulnerability, if nothing else; he’s silent as he holds onto Ed’s wrist and draws the white glove off.
“Hey,” Ed says. “You should at least buy me dinner before you undress me.”
“Brother,” Al says, heart skittering.
For all of his bitching about the things he misses and the things they’ve left behind, Ed always forgets-forgets how people are here, how society is, what’s permitted and what’s not. He forgets about the danger.
Or maybe he just doesn’t care. Maybe he misses the high you get from risking everything.
“I believe we established that I lack the funds to purchase dinner for one,” this Roy says, entirely calmly, “let alone two,” and Al thinks It’s him, Ed; let’s take him and run. This Roy turns Ed’s hand over carefully, dragging a newly-clean fingernail through the grooves and the gaps in the steel. “This is extraordinary. Anatomically, this is like some kind of miracle.”
“Your come-ons need work,” Ed says. Has he always been this reckless, or is it that Roy’s proximity has dragged him to the brink of insanity all at once? “And believe me-” He undoes the top button of his shirt and pushes his collar out of the way. “-miracles come with scars.”
Roy stares wordlessly for a few disproportionately lengthy seconds, and then he smiles faintly.
“Roy Mustang,” he says, “at your service. This is usually the part where I wink.”
Ed’s grinning. All Al can think is Here we go again, and then all he can think is Finally.
“What do you say we get you out of that disgusting excuse for an outfit?” Ed asks.
Roy’s eye glints, and Ed’s hips shift in the way that means he’s suppressing a shiver. “I say ‘Yes, please,’” Roy says.
Al clambers down from the chair, as noisily as possible.
“All right,” he says. “Before anybody does anything, we are checking Mr. Mustang thoroughly for lice, because I am not combing your hair out every day with one of those nit-combs if he does, Brother. And then we’re going to have some dinner, and then we’re going to brush our teeth, and after that, if we still have an hour or so before bedtime, maybe we c-”
Ed catches his waistcoat and draws him in and kisses the soft place under his ear that makes his knees buckle like he’s one of those girls in the cheap rag novels. And Ed, because he’s Ed, loops his left arm around Al’s waist to steady him.
“C’mon,” he says, breathing against Al’s throat, lips grazing Al’s skin so lightly they leave gooseflesh in their wake. “Haven’t we earned the right to have a little fun?”
“Fine,” Al says, which he thinks is impressively coherent given the circumstances. “But I mean it about the lice.”
“How-how old are you?” Roy asks. Whatever has been said, he’s swept his hair over the scars.
“That depends,” Al says. Ed nips so, so gently at his neck, and speech becomes extremely difficult. “Technically my body is fifteen, but I have an additional three years of memories, and if you’re talking about emotional maturity, I’m probably sixty-fi-Ed.”
The automail fingers wrap around his belt buckle and pull his hips against Ed’s, and Al chokes on whatever it was he was going to say, which probably wasn’t very important anyway, so never mind.
“You have a problem, Mustang?” Ed purrs, cheek against Al’s, eyes sharp and bright and trained on Roy. His grin is like a scythe.
“I have a number of problems,” Roy says. “This is not one of them.”
He steps closer, head half-inclined; Al can feel the heat of his body as he moves in, and even with just one eye his appraising gaze is almost too intense to bear. He sets one hand at the base of Ed’s spine and starts to run the fingers of the other slowly through Al’s hair.
“Lice,” Al says, slightly faintly it has to be admitted.
“It’ll be easier to check when he’s naked,” Ed says.
Roy’s smile tilts up on the right side. “You’re not from around here,” he says, “are you?”
“You have no idea,” Ed says.
As it turns out, threesome sex with this world’s Roy Mustang is even better than the night in Paris with Russell’s double, which Al had sort of assumed would remain the zenith of his sexual experiences. Usually, he tries to stay awake every night until Ed’s dropped off, as the first sleep cycle tends to be the most prolific breeding ground for Brother’s nightmares, but tonight Al’s so exhausted that he passes out with his head nestled into Ed’s side and his arm slung over Roy’s waist.
It’s actually the soft sigh and not the movement that wakes him-by the time he’s convinced his bleary eyes to focus, Roy has slid over to the edge of the bed and is carefully stepping down. Al watches through his eyelashes, trying to gauge Roy’s expression in the dark. He hears a deep breath and a gentle exhale, and then there’s a flash of a wistful smile. This is not the reaction of a man about to pop out to the loo.
Al gives him a minute to creep out of the bedroom and start collecting his clothing from the rather large pile they left on the kitchen floor. Then he shifts carefully away from Ed’s warm, softly-breathing body, shoulders on his flannel bathrobe, and pads out barefoot after Roy.
Roy’s wound the filthy bandages back around his head, and he looks up, startled, as Al very quietly shuts the bedroom door.
“Sorry to wake you,” Roy says. “I thought it might be easier.”
Al leans against the doorframe and folds his arms. “For whom?”
Roy smiles thinly. “I could hop a train by six and be in Cardiff before the sun’s up-find a short-staffed coal freighter and pay my way as I go; try my luck in the States.”
“You don’t seem to have an abundance of luck,” Al says. “And it’s worse over there.”
“At least it’s open,” Roy says. “You could walk forever in America and never reach the other side.”
“I have dreams like that,” Al says. “I wake up sweating.”
Roy pulls his gloves on and flexes his fingers. “Not a wanderer?”
“I did that for a while,” Al says. “If you’d walked a desert, you’d be singing a different tune.”
“This is the only song I know,” Roy says.
Al nods to the bandages. “How did it happen?”
“Manchuria.”
“That’s a place.”
“It’s a whole lot more than that.”
Al nudges his toe at a rather dangerous nail protruding from the floorboard. “At least stay a day or two.”
“I don’t want to be a parasite.”
“We’d put you to work,” Al says. “Brother isn’t about to cut you any slack-it’s an equivalency thing, if you look at it from just the right angle. But it’s not about that. It’s simpler than that. I think you can probably see it, because you’re not too different. Ed has lost more than some people ever have in the first place. And I know he’ll just hunker down and try to grin and bear it if you disappear, but I don’t think he should have to. I don’t think that’s fair. And I don’t think you really want to leave-I think you’re just used to running from anyone who gets too close, and the fact that we see through you so easily scares the hell out of you. If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you honestly believe you’re better off going, I’ll escort you out that door.”
Roy wets his lips. There’s a scabbing mark along the upper one where Ed bit him earlier.
“I don’t have anything,” Roy says. “I don’t own anything, and I don’t have anything to give.”
“Yes, you do,” Al says. “We don’t ask for much.”
Roy hesitates another moment-long enough that Al thinks maybe he was wrong about all of it. Long enough that Al has time to start bracing himself for Ed’s deeply-buried devastation.
Then Roy takes off his coat and hangs it on one of the hooks by the door.
“We’re going to have to burn that,” Al says. “I cannot be convinced that there aren’t any insects nesting in it. How do you take your tea?”
Roy frowns faintly. “I’m sorry?”
“Your tea,” Al says. “In the morning. Milk, sugar? Although I have to warn you that Brother won’t kiss you if you’ve had milk; it’s a matter of principle.”
“Oh,” Roy says. “I… black is fine.”
“Done,” Al says. He stands up and holds out his hand. “Come on back to bed; it’s late.”
Roy reaches out and then hesitates again. “Are you sure about this? I’m… not much good to anyone.”
“Like I said.” Al steps forward, takes his hand, and tugs. “We don’t need much.”
He peels all of the ratty layers off again, as quietly as he can, and attempts to settle them both with minimal mattress creaking. Ed’s eyes open just wide enough to show a sliver of dark gold-Al doubts he’s properly awake.
“Mmnh,” he says, flailing his left arm towards them and twining his fingers in Al’s hair. “Love you. C’mere. S’cold.”
Al wraps Roy’s arm over both of them, and the bed warms up in a hurry.
Tomorrow morning, he thinks as he drifts into the darkness, three teas-one milk and no sugar; one sugar and no milk; one straight black. That sounds just about right.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed/Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,130
Warnings: language, MAJOR spoilers for 2003/CoS, implied threesome sexytimes
Summary: The Elrics have wended their way to London. On a dark night down a dirty street, Al gambles on a familiar soul.
Author's Note: In the parallel universe where I live, hiza_chan offhandedly mentioning that she hasn't seen very many alt!Roys counts as a prompt. So I OT3'd. At work. Fortunately, it's only, y'know, eight times longer than it needed to be for this week's pulped_fictions thing. XD'
Given half the chance, would I take any of it back?
- “Shake It Off” - Florence + The Machine -
WITH THE DEVIL ON YOUR BACK
Usually Ed’s head is so firmly in the clouds that Al can almost see ice crystals in his hair, but this morning, as they emerge from Warren Street with their arms full of draft edits, the elder Elric stops short. The crowd pouring up and out jostles them, indistinguishable elbows digging at Al’s shoulders and his ribs, but the look in Ed’s eyes makes him stop moving and turn to follow his brother’s gaze.
There’s a man sitting on the street, slouching against one of the storefronts. He has a rusted tin can in his right hand, and as he shakes it, half a dozen coins rattle against the sides. A filthy bandage snakes around his skull and drapes over his left eye, but his clothes are so tattered and his face is so dirty that Al almost doesn’t recognize him all the same.
“It’s not him,” Ed says before Al can even find the words to ask. “Not really. It’s never really them. You met Hughes.”
“But-”
“But nothing.”
“But everything,” Al says, clutching a manuscript closer as a particularly ungracious pedestrian bumps his arm. “Look at him. Something terrible must have happened. And even if he’s not the same, we can’t pay our debts to the one we know. We have an obligation to help him.”
“It’s not him,” Ed says, and he pivots on his right heel and starts striding down the pavement.
Al hesitates another moment, hugging the papers to his chest. The more he looks, the harder it becomes to look away-this man’s jaw is identical, but for the stubble; his hair is longer, and it’s never been so unkempt; his eye is precisely the same shape, but it’s dull. This man shakes the can and curls his free hand in the collar of his coat, pulling it tighter. His gaze is flat, cold, empty as it pans over the hurrying mass of humanity; and then it lands on Al, and it focuses, and it burns.
It’s him. Somehow, it’s him, even here, even with a different life and a different story; they’re the same person. They have the same soul underneath. And Al can’t let that go.
Al swallows, pinned by the heat of that solitary eye, by the intensity, by the connection. It has to be him.
Al pulls the papers a little closer, tears himself away, and darts off running after Ed.
He’s always been more observant than his brother-Ed is a doer, an actor, a builder. He’s a cause, not an effect. Al’s capable of impulsiveness, too; he gets hot and cold and bright and dark almost as wildly as Ed, sometimes; but he’s used to standing back and watching the progression of Ed’s projects. It’s turned him into an analyst.
Al notices things. Al noticed the way that Roy Mustang, their Roy Mustang, the Roy Mustang, looked at Ed-or, more specifically, the way that he wouldn’t. Roy looked everywhere but at Ed, and Al thinks that was because he knew the plan, knew what Ed intended, and knew that he would have to let Ed go again. Roy was preparing to lose him a second time.
Al can’t extrapolate far enough to know if it worked, but he can tell that even if Ed wasn’t fully aware of what was happening, he sensed it. He wasn’t conscious of the details, but he felt the end of something significant, and he accepted it. Ed was saying goodbye to more than just his complicated relationship with Roy Mustang-Ed was saying goodbye to Amestris; to home; to second chances; to Al, or so he thought. Ed was giving up everything. He didn’t have much time to spare trying to meet Roy’s narrowed gaze in search of closure.
Al has to jog to catch up to Ed, who’s still forging through the legions of Londoners. Al keeps pace with his brother in silence for a moment before he tilts his head and clears his throat, watching Ed’s face.
“If he’s still there tonight,” he says, “we’re taking him in.”
“He’s not a stray fucking cat, Al,” Ed says, and his voice is low, but there’s a razor-wire edge. “Though he’s probably got the same fucking diseases. We’re not going near him, period. He’s just trouble, okay? We’ve got enough fucking trouble. We can’t afford to feed another mouth, and you know it, and even if we could, he’s probably even more of a bastard in this universe. You saw what this world did to Hughes-to all of Germany. This country’s exactly the same. People are just fucked up here, Al. And we can’t go around piling their shit on ourselves just because we know better. We’re not heroes in this place, okay? Never were, never will be, don’t fucking want to.”
“You don’t mean that,” Al says.
“Yes, I do.”
“You don’t know what you mean,” Al says. “You can’t even use semicolons.”
Ed growls in the back of his throat, but the twitch of his lips betrays him. “God fucking damn it, Al-I told you I’d leave punctuation to you from now on. Happy?”
“Delighted,” Al says, but most of his mind is already counting down the hours.
They’re a team. They’re such an excellent team that their idiosyncrasies-Ed’s cold metal hand; Al’s fifteen-year-old face and advanced vocabulary; their inseparability; their old habits; Ed’s eyes-are duly overlooked.
They vet things. They edit textbooks of physics and chemistry; they test and improve mathematical formulae. Ed has extensive insider knowledge of the German rocketry program, and Great Britain has scented the next war. Al has discovered that the grammatical minutiae of the English language are stunningly similar to to the rules of Amestrian, and he’s become notorious for the mercilessness of his red pen.
It’s simple work-it’s small. The weight of this world rests on somebody else’s shoulders. Ed complains, says he’s restless, says they’re poor, but he’s freer than he ever was before. They’re just people now. They’re quiet. And it suits them.
Ed pretends he’s forgotten, but Al sees the way his shoulders tense as they start back towards the Tube station. Only very rarely do they walk in silence-only when they’re pointedly not-discussing something Ed doesn’t want to address. Al thinks the evasion is silly. If something needs to be said, it will be, sooner or later, and there’s nothing to be gained in procrastinating. But then, he’d let Ed get away with anything.
Al picks the huddled shape out of the dimness with fifty yards to go. “He’s still there.”
“Don’t care,” Ed says.
“Of all the lies you could tell about this,” Al says, “that’s the dumbest. I’m going to ask him if he’s hungry.”
“Are you crazy?” Ed hisses. “He’s probably a psycho serial killer, and he’s just waiting with the knife.”
“He’s not,” Al says.
“How do you know?” Ed asks. “Mustang-our Mustang, the Mustang we actually know, who is not this guy… Al, he killed the Rockbells. The fucking Rockbells. Executed them, cold blood. That was our Mustang-rich, smarmy, in-control, Colonel Dickhead Mustang. This guy is beaten down and broken and washed the fuck up, okay? We don’t know what he’s been through, and we don’t know what he’s done, and we don’t have any idea what he’s capable of.”
“It can’t hurt just to learn his name,” Al says.
Ed’s eyes narrow, and his mouth tightens, and he says nothing.
He doesn’t have to say anything. Ed’s lost more than Al has, when you really sum it up. Ed lost Alfons Heiderich, and Dad, and the magic that made him whole. He fought his way to a glimpse of Roy, and Winry, and the land that mothered them, and then he handed it all back again, in the name of making things right. Ed has sacrificed too much, too many times. He can’t take any more disappointment.
“Give me sixty seconds,” Al says. “Then we can go.”
He scurries over before Ed can catch his arm and crouches down, shifting the hangar blueprints to the crook of his elbow so that he won’t bend them. Close up, the man looks haggard and dirty and weak.
“Hi,” Al says.
The man blinks his one eye. “Hello,” he says, and it’s Roy’s voice, whether or not it’s hoarse and scratchy and low.
Al looks at him for a moment, thoughtfully. Same cheekbones. Same chin. Same eyebrows. Same hands, but these gloves are gray wool, fraying at the fingertips.
“Do I know you?” the man asks.
“Almost,” Al says. “Do you want something to eat?”
“He can’t have any of our food,” Ed says loudly from several feet away.
“Shut up, Brother,” Al says. “He can have my share.”
“No, he can’t!”
“I couldn’t possibly deprive you of a meal,” the man-who-even-talks-like-Roy says. “You’re so little as it is.”
“I’m still growing,” Al says.
Ed snickers.
“In that case,” Al says, shifting the blueprints a little more and fumbling in his pocket for his wallet, “how much more do you need before you can buy a nice dinner somewhere?”
“Al,” Ed says.
“I won’t just leave hi-”
“Please keep your money,” the man says. “I can’t take charity from children.”
That sounds like Roy, too-his pride is the only thing he has left, and he’ll guard it like a dragon’s hoard.
Al will be having none of that, thank you.
“Look at yourself,” he says. “How long has it been since you slept on a bed, or bathed, or ate something that didn’t make you sick? All I’m offering you is a little bit of comfort. You don’t have a whole lot of dignity left-what good is clinging to the shreds of it?”
“Al,” Ed says in the Final Warning voice, “he is not coming back with us.”
“He can sleep on the floor,” Al says.
“He is not sleeping in our flat.”
“He can sleep in the hall. At least it’s heated.”
“I’m not letting him loiter around outside our door while we’re unconscious!”
“What in the world do you think he’s going to do?”
“You saw ‘Nosferatu’!”
“He is not a vampire.”
“For all we know, he is!”
It’s impossible to argue with Ed when he’s being like this. Al turns to the man-who-might-as-well-be-Roy instead and finds a familiar expression of sardonic amusement.
“You’re not a vampire, are you?” Al asks.
Essentially-Roy shakes his head, and the corners of his lips quirk up.
“But you’re hungry, right?”
Essentially-Roy nods.
“There,” Al says. “Problem solved.”
“He is not sleeping in our flat,” Ed says. “Even if he’s not a vampire, he stinks.”
“I beg your pardon,” definitely-Roy says.
“I’m not having you in the kitchen smelling like that,” Ed says. “Al, give him one of the crap towels. Bathroom’s down the hall. Hot water lasts about thirty seconds, but you’re just going to have to deal with it until you’re cleaner than my brother’s language.”
“Yes, sir,” must-be-Roy says, still with that flicker of amusement in his one good eye. Al hands over the crappiest towel they have-heretical hospitality or no, this Roy will need several washings before he won’t muddy the linens-and he and Ed watch must-be-Roy step out into the hallway and pull the door carefully shut behind him.
The silence swells for a moment.
“What the fuck are we doing?” Ed asks.
“The right thing,” Al says.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“Agreed.”
The resemblance is staggering when this Roy is clean. ‘Resemblance’ isn’t an appropriate word anymore; this is the same man, down to the last scrubbed-pink fingertip.
“What the hell are you shivering for?” Ed asks.
“You weren’t exaggerating about the hot water,” this Roy says.
“I have never fucking exaggerated in my long and dramatic life,” Ed says.
“Certainly not,” this Roy says. “You’re not the type.”
Ed very nearly cracks a grin.
“Brother,” Al says, “do we have gauze?”
“Maybe,” Ed says, eyeing this Roy’s makeshift eyepatch dubiously. “Yeah, take that nasty thing off; you’re probably spreading plague or rabies or typhoid or something. And why the hell did you put your old clothes back on? Five quid says you’ve got fleas.”
“I do not,” Roy says, imperiously, “carry disease.” He pauses, rather less imperiously. “And, nasty or no, I don’t take it off.”
Ed flicks his gaze towards Al. Al dips his head swiftly and then feigns interest in the chair shortage in their kitchen.
“At least let me get you something sanitary to wear,” Ed says, oozing charm now. “Something nice and clean and warm. I think I have one of our asshole dad’s coats packed up somewhere-I guess just a blanket would be a little bit salacious-”
Al hops up onto the chair he’s been faux-examining and snatches the dirty bandages away.
This Roy goes through tumults of emotions just like the ones Al remembers-shock, bewilderment, humiliation, rage, resignation. It’s like watching a film with half the reel’s frames dropped, snapping from one moment to the next.
“Shrapnel?” Ed asks, defiantly undaunted. So much for treating this Roy like a stranger; Ed’s already relying on his understanding of the man he knows. He reaches up, then, and brushes the fingertips of his left hand lightly over the ragged, crawling white scar tissue and the angry red half-healed wounds. In all honesty, it’s a hideous deformation-grotesque, violent, unsightly, upsetting. Al doesn’t know the details of the other Roy’s mirror-image injury, but this one’s eye is gone, and the empty socket is crisscrossed with stark, jagged lines as though it’s been scratched out in a drawing by a spiteful child.
Roy, any Roy, wouldn’t want that to be seen-wouldn’t want to be seen so unequivocally damaged, so repulsively destroyed. Ed was right. They don’t know what this man will do if they provoke him; they don’t know anything at all. Al stands on the chair with the stained bandages in his hands and holds his breath.
Ed runs the pad of his thumb across this Roy’s cheekbone, tracing the ridges of discolored flesh. “This is it?” he asks. “This is all you’ve got?”
This Roy’s existing eye narrows, and his fingers curl slowly into fists. “It’s hardly-”
“Nice to meet you,” Ed says, holding out his right hand. “I’m Edward Elric.”
Al thinks for a long, weighty moment that Roy’s going to slap him and walk out. Then Roy lifts his hand and clasps it around Ed’s and starts to shake and stares.
“Sophisticated machinery,” Ed says. “You people have nothing on this shit. Back home, you probably could’ve had a new eye-I mean, Archer did; did I tell you that, Al? Did you get a chance to ask that dumbass colonel why he didn’t get one, too?”
Al knows that Ed only ever reveals his automail in this world in a rush of nerves, with a flood of defensive explanations. It seems like Roy is intuiting the vulnerability, if nothing else; he’s silent as he holds onto Ed’s wrist and draws the white glove off.
“Hey,” Ed says. “You should at least buy me dinner before you undress me.”
“Brother,” Al says, heart skittering.
For all of his bitching about the things he misses and the things they’ve left behind, Ed always forgets-forgets how people are here, how society is, what’s permitted and what’s not. He forgets about the danger.
Or maybe he just doesn’t care. Maybe he misses the high you get from risking everything.
“I believe we established that I lack the funds to purchase dinner for one,” this Roy says, entirely calmly, “let alone two,” and Al thinks It’s him, Ed; let’s take him and run. This Roy turns Ed’s hand over carefully, dragging a newly-clean fingernail through the grooves and the gaps in the steel. “This is extraordinary. Anatomically, this is like some kind of miracle.”
“Your come-ons need work,” Ed says. Has he always been this reckless, or is it that Roy’s proximity has dragged him to the brink of insanity all at once? “And believe me-” He undoes the top button of his shirt and pushes his collar out of the way. “-miracles come with scars.”
Roy stares wordlessly for a few disproportionately lengthy seconds, and then he smiles faintly.
“Roy Mustang,” he says, “at your service. This is usually the part where I wink.”
Ed’s grinning. All Al can think is Here we go again, and then all he can think is Finally.
“What do you say we get you out of that disgusting excuse for an outfit?” Ed asks.
Roy’s eye glints, and Ed’s hips shift in the way that means he’s suppressing a shiver. “I say ‘Yes, please,’” Roy says.
Al clambers down from the chair, as noisily as possible.
“All right,” he says. “Before anybody does anything, we are checking Mr. Mustang thoroughly for lice, because I am not combing your hair out every day with one of those nit-combs if he does, Brother. And then we’re going to have some dinner, and then we’re going to brush our teeth, and after that, if we still have an hour or so before bedtime, maybe we c-”
Ed catches his waistcoat and draws him in and kisses the soft place under his ear that makes his knees buckle like he’s one of those girls in the cheap rag novels. And Ed, because he’s Ed, loops his left arm around Al’s waist to steady him.
“C’mon,” he says, breathing against Al’s throat, lips grazing Al’s skin so lightly they leave gooseflesh in their wake. “Haven’t we earned the right to have a little fun?”
“Fine,” Al says, which he thinks is impressively coherent given the circumstances. “But I mean it about the lice.”
“How-how old are you?” Roy asks. Whatever has been said, he’s swept his hair over the scars.
“That depends,” Al says. Ed nips so, so gently at his neck, and speech becomes extremely difficult. “Technically my body is fifteen, but I have an additional three years of memories, and if you’re talking about emotional maturity, I’m probably sixty-fi-Ed.”
The automail fingers wrap around his belt buckle and pull his hips against Ed’s, and Al chokes on whatever it was he was going to say, which probably wasn’t very important anyway, so never mind.
“You have a problem, Mustang?” Ed purrs, cheek against Al’s, eyes sharp and bright and trained on Roy. His grin is like a scythe.
“I have a number of problems,” Roy says. “This is not one of them.”
He steps closer, head half-inclined; Al can feel the heat of his body as he moves in, and even with just one eye his appraising gaze is almost too intense to bear. He sets one hand at the base of Ed’s spine and starts to run the fingers of the other slowly through Al’s hair.
“Lice,” Al says, slightly faintly it has to be admitted.
“It’ll be easier to check when he’s naked,” Ed says.
Roy’s smile tilts up on the right side. “You’re not from around here,” he says, “are you?”
“You have no idea,” Ed says.
As it turns out, threesome sex with this world’s Roy Mustang is even better than the night in Paris with Russell’s double, which Al had sort of assumed would remain the zenith of his sexual experiences. Usually, he tries to stay awake every night until Ed’s dropped off, as the first sleep cycle tends to be the most prolific breeding ground for Brother’s nightmares, but tonight Al’s so exhausted that he passes out with his head nestled into Ed’s side and his arm slung over Roy’s waist.
It’s actually the soft sigh and not the movement that wakes him-by the time he’s convinced his bleary eyes to focus, Roy has slid over to the edge of the bed and is carefully stepping down. Al watches through his eyelashes, trying to gauge Roy’s expression in the dark. He hears a deep breath and a gentle exhale, and then there’s a flash of a wistful smile. This is not the reaction of a man about to pop out to the loo.
Al gives him a minute to creep out of the bedroom and start collecting his clothing from the rather large pile they left on the kitchen floor. Then he shifts carefully away from Ed’s warm, softly-breathing body, shoulders on his flannel bathrobe, and pads out barefoot after Roy.
Roy’s wound the filthy bandages back around his head, and he looks up, startled, as Al very quietly shuts the bedroom door.
“Sorry to wake you,” Roy says. “I thought it might be easier.”
Al leans against the doorframe and folds his arms. “For whom?”
Roy smiles thinly. “I could hop a train by six and be in Cardiff before the sun’s up-find a short-staffed coal freighter and pay my way as I go; try my luck in the States.”
“You don’t seem to have an abundance of luck,” Al says. “And it’s worse over there.”
“At least it’s open,” Roy says. “You could walk forever in America and never reach the other side.”
“I have dreams like that,” Al says. “I wake up sweating.”
Roy pulls his gloves on and flexes his fingers. “Not a wanderer?”
“I did that for a while,” Al says. “If you’d walked a desert, you’d be singing a different tune.”
“This is the only song I know,” Roy says.
Al nods to the bandages. “How did it happen?”
“Manchuria.”
“That’s a place.”
“It’s a whole lot more than that.”
Al nudges his toe at a rather dangerous nail protruding from the floorboard. “At least stay a day or two.”
“I don’t want to be a parasite.”
“We’d put you to work,” Al says. “Brother isn’t about to cut you any slack-it’s an equivalency thing, if you look at it from just the right angle. But it’s not about that. It’s simpler than that. I think you can probably see it, because you’re not too different. Ed has lost more than some people ever have in the first place. And I know he’ll just hunker down and try to grin and bear it if you disappear, but I don’t think he should have to. I don’t think that’s fair. And I don’t think you really want to leave-I think you’re just used to running from anyone who gets too close, and the fact that we see through you so easily scares the hell out of you. If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you honestly believe you’re better off going, I’ll escort you out that door.”
Roy wets his lips. There’s a scabbing mark along the upper one where Ed bit him earlier.
“I don’t have anything,” Roy says. “I don’t own anything, and I don’t have anything to give.”
“Yes, you do,” Al says. “We don’t ask for much.”
Roy hesitates another moment-long enough that Al thinks maybe he was wrong about all of it. Long enough that Al has time to start bracing himself for Ed’s deeply-buried devastation.
Then Roy takes off his coat and hangs it on one of the hooks by the door.
“We’re going to have to burn that,” Al says. “I cannot be convinced that there aren’t any insects nesting in it. How do you take your tea?”
Roy frowns faintly. “I’m sorry?”
“Your tea,” Al says. “In the morning. Milk, sugar? Although I have to warn you that Brother won’t kiss you if you’ve had milk; it’s a matter of principle.”
“Oh,” Roy says. “I… black is fine.”
“Done,” Al says. He stands up and holds out his hand. “Come on back to bed; it’s late.”
Roy reaches out and then hesitates again. “Are you sure about this? I’m… not much good to anyone.”
“Like I said.” Al steps forward, takes his hand, and tugs. “We don’t need much.”
He peels all of the ratty layers off again, as quietly as he can, and attempts to settle them both with minimal mattress creaking. Ed’s eyes open just wide enough to show a sliver of dark gold-Al doubts he’s properly awake.
“Mmnh,” he says, flailing his left arm towards them and twining his fingers in Al’s hair. “Love you. C’mere. S’cold.”
Al wraps Roy’s arm over both of them, and the bed warms up in a hurry.
Tomorrow morning, he thinks as he drifts into the darkness, three teas-one milk and no sugar; one sugar and no milk; one straight black. That sounds just about right.